Regina police chief looks back on a busy 2020

There may not have been too much to do in 2020, but it would be difficult to say nothing happened this past year, especially when it comes to the Regina Police Service.

“There’s no question this was — I would say it’s the most challenging year our police service has faced when you consider the multitude of things that were thrown our way,” said Chief Evan Bray.

He did concede that a lot of what police dealt with — like COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement — were challenges for the community, not just the police.

“I think we were caught in a lot of these, in one way or another, and it really formed a lot of the work that we did this year,” said Bray.

If he could speak to himself back in January, Bray said he would tell himself to take a deep breath because things were about to get busy.

The first year of the new decade started with a bang, as tensions rose in the labour dispute between Unifor and the Co-op Refinery. Bray says that was a very emotional and divisive situation.

“I think we’ve come to learn quickly that you’re not always going to make a decision that makes everybody happy. So you have to make sure that you follow the principles that we operate under, which are keeping our community safe, understanding what our role is in these different situations, understanding what we can and cannot do within the confines of our job and what the law is,” said Bray.

Bray and the police service got a lot of criticism from both Unifor and the refinery for how the situation was handled. Looking back, Bray says there isn’t anything he’d do differently, though he said he might have wanted to establish lines of communication with both sides a little sooner.

In the summer, the Black Lives Matter movement was pushed to the forefront of communities across North America after several high-profile police killings of people of colour. There were a few rallies in Regina and there were calls for changes in how police deal with things here.

Bray said that was a really important time in history, and we saw the world step up and protest and talk about the need to get rid of racism and bias and hateful behaviour.

“I think that was a great time for us as police to kind of just sit back and listen, listen to what our community was saying to us, because it was speaking to us,” said Bray.

The police were invited to one of those rallies and Bray took the time to speak to the crowd, though his words weren’t accepted by everyone there.

Bray said for a lot of the service members, the conversations and stories brought forward put a bit of a tarnish on the profession.

“I think all of us hung our heads a little bit through that, which is, to me, (proof that) a bit of understanding, of community strife, of humility is probably good for an organization to go through,” said Bray.

Bray said there are a lot of positive steps that came out of that, including some conversations and an increased recruitment effort in Saskatchewan’s Black communities.

The police have also had to deal with the overdose crisis in Regina in 2020 — record numbers of deaths and calls regarding overdoses.

“It’s a pandemic in and of itself, there’s no question about that,” said Bray.

Bray said thanks to public health orders keeping people at home and the borders being closed, there was a lot less meth available and so people are finding whatever else they can to feed their addictions including fentanyl.

“Each situation is very different but I know that addiction is something that is so strong and so prevalent in all communities, but in ours, we’ve seen it significantly go up this past year, and we need to come at this from a few angles. We can’t wait for just long-term solutions, some of these changes have to be immediate,” said Bray.

He said the police will continue their targeted enforcement on drug trafficking, but he thinks harm reduction efforts and long-term supports in the community need to be a part of it too.

Including overdoses, police officers have had to deal with a lot of difficult calls this year and Bray said that has taken a toll on members. He said there was one call this year where a 12-year-old had died of an overdose.

“On average, I think we’ve responded to nearly four overdose calls a day for this year. We’ve responded to nearly three either attempted or completed suicides per day this year. Twenty to 21 domestic conflict calls per day this year. Our number of these social challenges, or these wicked problems as sometimes people like to call them, are only continuing to rise,” he said.

Bray said the police service spent a lot of time and effort this year on the mental health and well-being of its members.

The COVID-19 pandemic has of course had its effect on police and the work they do, as it has on everything else. Bray said there are the obvious things like making sure members have the right protective equipment and changing how police deliver services to have as little person-to-person contact as possible.

“It’s safe to say we’ve rewritten the manual completely. We’ve never, in our history, seen anything like this to the extent that this has swept through our organization,” said Bray.

Bray said the service did manage to find some efficiencies through that, and by moving some reporting online, was able to free up some officers to be out on the street.

Through all the challenges of 2020, there were some triumphs for the Regina Police Service as well.

Bray said officers took more drugs and guns off the street than they ever have before.

And he also pointed to the recent arrest made in the disappearance of Patrick Thauberger 23 years ago.

“That has been one of the most incredible investigations and pieces of work that I’ve seen in a long time,” Bray said.

Bray also talked about the Scott Police Academy, a new program just started at the North Central high school in 2020 which gives students a focus in justice studies.

Bray said, as chief of police, he’s so proud of the work his officers do.